Portrait of Milo and Milo Jones as cornet player

We don't know much about my grandfather Milo, except that he disappeared in 1902 when he was 42. Howard, the oldest was 15 and Dad was 13. They quit school and went to work. When I was a child I told my dad that I thought his father was a terrible person because he had abandoned the family. For one of the few times in his life, my father became furious. As I grew older I began to learn from relatives that Milo had done his best to keep the marriage going but that his wife was the proverbial shrew. After going through a bad marriage myself, I finally understood what a child couldn't.


Jane Elizabeth Jones with Howard to her left and William on her lap

Milo Married Jane Elizabeth Hill / Hills in 1886 in Duluth Minnesota. The 1895 Minnesota census which shows Milo and Jeanie with their three sons, Howard V. Jones, William C. and Percivile, living in the basement of 614 E. 5th St. in Duluth. My father recalled living in a clapboard house a few blocks from the Duluth Aerial Bridge. Duluth was still a rough and tumble frontier town, being the Northern Pacific Railway's gateway to the West and the last steamer stop on the Great Lakes. My father told of his father sending him to the tavern to get a bucket of beer and seeing gun fights on the streets. Unlike in the movies, the fights would spill out onto the gas light streets, they would take a few swings at each other, and then start backing away from each other with their hands on their guns. When they got far enough away that they thought the other guy couldn't hit them, they drew their guns and fired.

Milo worked as postman in Duluth and they lived in a clapboard house on Park Point, or what was then a Park Point. When they dug the ditch for the canal, Park Point became what was beyond the canal. Their house was on the Duluth side of it. Dad remembered that after church services on Sunday, all the men would turn out to manually dig the canal ditch. The fear was that without it, all the boat traffic would go to Superior Wisconsin.

Money must have been tight as Dad told of taking his wagon out on the railroad tracks to pick up lumps coal that had fallen from the rail cars. If he found coal they had heat. My father's job was to get up in the morning and start a coal fire in the pot bellied stove in the parlor and the cooking stove in the kitchen. Water was drawn from the pump on the back porch. That would have to wait until the stove was hot enough to melt and boil the water on the stove so the pump could be primed and unfrozen. My Dad tells of having to break the ice in the wash pan on the back porch to wash his face. The cold must have been unbearable in that uninsulated wood frame house. I lived for a year in Duluth and remember those vicious 60 mile an hour winds that would come off the lake to add to the misery of 40 degree below zero temperatures. They didn't know about wind chill in those days.

Milo's sister Catherine married John Howard of Howard Shipping who owned a fleet of lake boats and extensive mine operations in Lake and Cook counties. Dad told of standing in the snow outside the Duluth Opera House when he was a child and watching his Aunt Kitty arrive in a magnificent sleigh drawn by six white horses. When Milo disappeared in 1901, no help came from that end of the family.

---

HOWARD V. JONES

---

Howard married Eva Stockwell and they had one child, Howard jr. In the forties they all lived in Hibbing, MN. Howard Sr. worked for the Catapiller co. which supplied heavy machinery to the ore mines in Hibbing. As I was born in 1940 I only vaguely remember visiting my uncle Howard and aunt Eva. I do remember that cousin Howard was in the military and Jeannie lived a few blocks from us in a second story apartment. The only thing I remember about cousin Howard was his framed military photograph. Of course there were the family get togethers when there were more relatives than I knew existed, and darned it I knew who was who. I do recall one family dinner, perhaps it was Thanksgiving, and they were all there with Howard's son Philip who was three years younger than I was.


Howard jr. and Eugenia (Jean) Jones
Sometime in the late forties they moved to the West coast. I think that Howard jr. moved first with his family and uncle Howard and Eva followed later. I do remember that they pulled up to the side of the house to say good bye to Dad. They were pulling a trailer behind their car with their household goods in it. I have attempted to keep in touch over the years. But life has kept both families busy with their own growth, concerns, joy and trouble. The hope that we dirft no further apart is one of the reasons for putting this all in writing.


Phillip and Dianne Jones



Descendants of Howard Vincent Jones
1 Howard Vincent Jones 1887 -
. +Eva Mandana Stocjwell 1887 - 1953
. 2 Howard Vincent Jones jr. 1921 -
.... +Eugenia Maxine Jones
.... 3 Philip Charles Jones 1943 -
....... +Lynda Sands
....... 4 Vincent Jones Jones 1969 -
....... 4 Shannon Marie Jones 1972 -
.......... +Jeffrey Paul Nibur
.... 3 David Vincent Jones 1948 -
....... +Alice Kathleen Hart 1946 -
....... 4 Kenneth Jones 1965 -
.......... +Sharie Mohn 1965 -
.......... 5 Jena Jones 1984 -
.......... 5 Kile Jones 1986 -
.......... 5 Andrea Jones 1988 -
....... 4 Dale Jones 1966 -
.......... +Kim Wheeler 1965 -
.......... 5 Kelsie Jones 1991 -
.......... 5 Shellia Jones 1993 -
....... 4 [1] Barbara Jones 1969 -
.......... +Eddie Basham
.......... 5 Jessica Basham 1988 -
....... *2nd Husband of [1] Barbara Jones:
.......... +Stacy Smith
.......... 5 Morgan Lee Smith
.......... 5 Zachary Dal Smith
.... 3 [2] Dianne Jean Jones 1955 -
....... +Robert Ruth 1954 -
....... 4 Robert Vincent Ruth 1979 -
....... 4 Erika Diana Ruth 1981 -
.... *2nd Husband of [2] Dianne Jean Jones:
....... +George Geiger

---

WILLIAM C. JONES II

---

       
William C. Jones WW1 uniform and at the piano

So, at 13, my dad, and his brother Howard at 15 had to quit school to support the family. Percy was too young. In today's view of things this may seem terrible, but most people did not graduate high school, if not grade school in those days. Perhaps she could have taken in laundry, but options for their mother to work and still raise a family were few.

First Dad worked as an elevator operator, but a city inspector said he was too young. Next he became a Western Union delivery boy. He and another kid would practice telegraphy on a spare key and soon he was good enough to lie his age and get a job with the Great Northern Railway. He worked 53 years on that job, surviving the Eugene Debbs strike and going on to be the Chief Dispatcher at Hibbing. It was a 12 hour day and paid $5 a week, and that was darn good in those days. At night he would take a hand car from Duluth across the bay to Superior State Normal College where he finished high school and got two years of college.

When World War I broke out, He went down to enlist and told the man he wanted a guarantee that he would be on the front where the action was. He was told by the recruiter that he couldn't promise that, and that he should go home and think it over. Later when supplies to the Eastern Front were cut off by the collapse of the rail system, he was recruited as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Russian Railway Service. Their job was to keep the Trans Siberian Railway running and bring supplies to the front. I believe he went over in 1916 and didn't return until 1920 shen the war was long over. He received his orders and pay from the Army but was told when he got back that he had not been in the Army but the State Department. The government was trying to cover up the fact that they had troops in Russia. The men never received discharge papers or any acknowledgment that they had served.

He had taken lots of pictures and took profuse notes while he was there. There was mass starvation and many deaths from Typhus. He caught Typhus and was in a coma for 2 weeks. When he came to he was told that they had already made his coffin. He survived but many did not. They would run flatcars out along the line and collect bodies. They dumped the bodies on the ice from a bridge near Vladavistock. By the spring the bodies were up to the bridge. When the ice melted the bodies were washed out to sea.

Of course they were in the midst of the Russian Revolution. The American troops were to remain neutral under orders of President Wilson. However, the infantry troops in Archangel were forced into combat against the Reds by the British under whose command they were. There were altogether eight nations that had troops in Russia, ostensibly we were there to bring supplies to the eastern front and keep the Japanese from seizing Siberia. Dad would be riding the train and it would be stopped by the White Russians (Loyalists), and they would pull everybody off the train they suspected of being red, and kill them. The train would travel further down the line and the Reds would do the same to the White Russians. They'd see Dad's papers and say; "Amerikanski OK!" and grab someone else and shoot them. He spoke of being in a crowded restaurant in some Siberian frontier town when an argument broke at the next table. It became more heated until one of them stood up, slammed his fist on the table and yelled in Russian "I'm a Kosak!" Suddenly he and Dad were the only ones left in the restaurant. The Kosaks had the right to kill anybody with no questions asked.

Photos by W.C. Jones of Russian Railway Service in Japan and Siberia.

It appears that my grandmother considered Dad to be security in her old age and would drive off any woman he brought home. When he married my mother he did not introduce them until after the ceremony. She then wailed to my mother "What am I to do now? Bill will put me out on the street." Of course, Dad didn't and continued to support her in her own house in Duluth until she died in 1940. Dad married my mother, Dorothy Finster in Hibbing and raised us three kids there. He was a good father and a good person, and we kids proved that he had an infinite amount of patience. He was 52 when I was born. Mom was younger than him by 19 years. My sister Kay married Roger Thyr and they raised two children. Brian and Lisa who are now married and have kids of their own. Bob married his high school sweetheart, Merry Alice Maki and raised two boys of their own, David and Corey, and adopted a daughter they named Sarah Kay. They later took in two Vietnamese boys who were refugees.

Dad, Dale and Bob


C. Robert, Kay Janet, and Dale "Chet" Jones


From Left to Right: Natalia, Lisa, Kay, Terry, Charlie, Tod, and Roger

---

Descendants of William Cornelius Jones

1 William Cornelius Jones 1889 - 1965
. +Julia Dorothy Finster 1907 - 1983
. 2 Kay Janet Dorothy Jones 1938 -
.... +Roger Thyr
.... 3 Brian Thyr
....... +Danita Jo Carlson 1966 -
....... 4 Nicholas James Thyr 1994 -
....... 4 Ingrid Caroline Thyr 1997 -
.... 3 Lisa Karen Thyr 1962 -
....... +Scott James Barker 1962 -
....... 4 Charles James Barker 1985 -
....... 4 Natalia Lynn Barker 1987 -
. 2 Cornel Robert Finster Jones 1939 -
.... +Merryalice Maki 1939 -
.... 3 David Bruce William Jones 1964 -
....... +Ann Summerville Kelly 1964 -
....... 4 Seamus Dylan Summerville Jones 1995 -
....... 4 Isobel Alina Kelly Jones 1998 -
.... 3 Corey Robert Nicholas Jones 1966 -
.... 3 Sarah Kay Louise Jones 1969 -
..... + John William Clapp 1960 -
..... 4 Ashley Elizabeth Clapp - 2000
. 2 Dale Chester Westbrook Jones 1940 -
.... +Jeanne Adelle Finkelstein 1936 - 1985
.... 3 Terrence Flom Jones 1972 -
....... +Autumn Hickenbotham
....... 4 Yrick Jones (adopt) 1996 -
....... 4 Zayde Tatania Jones 2000 -
....... 4 Aiko Jones 2003
.... 3 Tod Simeon Hayward Jones 1976 -

More about Dale C Jones

---

PERCY JONES

Sgt Percy Jones co. F, 31st Railway Transportation Corps
survived being gassed in the trenches in WWI

VETERAN SERVICE DATES: 08/07/1918 - 07/28/1919
DATE OF BIRTH: 11/20/1893
DATE OF DEATH: 03/07/1955
NASHVILLE NATIONAL CEMETERY

---

I guess every family has their favorite uncle. Percy was mine. He would show up at the house with a bag of goodies from his carnival and borrow money from my father to keep his show going. What kid wouldn't love an uncle who owned a carnival in the Dakotas. Although he never brought it to Minnesota, the mere mention of his name would get me free run of the carnivals including free rides and eating in the mess tent with them. Percy gave me my first camera and I later became a photographer. I was a professional photographer before I became a commercial artist.

In the early part of the century, Percy had tried to make a living as a Dutch style baggy pants Vaudeville comedian, (note: it was popular to make fun of the old New York "Knickerbockers" Dutch at that time). He would go on the circuit and wire my dad for money to get back home when the show closed. On one trip he went to the post office to pick up his mail and the clerk started to ask about his mother, brothers, and cousins. When Percy asked who he was and why he knew his family, the man slammed the window shut. When Percy returned later to question him further, he was told that the man had suddenly quit his job and left. Later when my father asked him to describe him, he was told that the man was Milo, his father. Percy had been too young to remember him when Milo left in 1902. It is possible that Milo married again and that we have cousins out there. Perhaps he could be tracked down through the Post Office if he drew a pension.

Percy died of a heart attack in the mid fifties traveling with the carnival in Nebraska. Dad went out to bury him and Percy's partner told him that as Percy's brother, Dad was now his partner. Dad looked at the books which were heavily in the red, and said he wanted no part of it. He advised them to get the carnival on the road before the sheriff arrived and seized the show for debts owed. Among carnival folk Percy was famous for beating the tar out of the mayor of Bismark when he ordered the show out of town.

Percy and his first wife Dorothy divorced. She moved to New York and lived with a local character named Rigs O'Rourke who owned a tavern in lower Manhattan. My Dad, a compassionate person, sort of adopted Jane and did his best to help them out before and after they moved East. When I moved to New York in 1968, Jane and her husband Jack Quigley put me up for half a year. Anyway, when her mother Dorothy met me, she told Jane that I "was just like Percy and would come to no good." Perhaps she was right. Jane had three boys, Jack, David and Daniel. I had lost track of them over the years, but recently found them through the net. Jack is in Texas and David in Virginia. I hope to get a page from them.

  
Jack Quigley II and Parents Jane and Jack Quigley

---

Descendants of Percy Milo Jones
1 Percy Milo Jones 1894 -
. +Dorothy Phillips - 1968
. 2 Jane Jones
.... +Jack Quigley
.... 3 John Quigley
.... 3 David Quigley
.... 3 Daniel Quigley